Don't listen to the crowd, they say "jump."
The administration is determined to prop up GM as a jobs program for the UAW and Midwestern states rich in electoral votes. This frenzy will intensify as the administration's decisions deepen the debacle.
via George F. Will - Have We Got a Deal for You at GM - washingtonpost.com.
He laughs!
By tickling young gorillas, chimpanzees, bonobos, and orangutans, researchers say they learned that all great apes laugh.
Their findings suggest we inherited our own ability to laugh from the last common ancestor from which humans and great apes evolved, which lived 10 to 16 million years ago.
via Apes Laugh, Tickle Study Finds.
Click through to hear sounds of ape laughter; I liked the chimp one the best.
Look, stimulus spending canât work, because of one of three things happens:
1. That extra spending means extra taxes which means the whole thing is a wash. (Government spending having some âmultiplierâ effect unknown to consumer or business spending is a big, fat lie.)
2. That extra spending means extra debt, which drives up interest rates, which chokes off growth.
3. That extra spending means extra money being printed, which means inflation which means any growth is illusory.
Of course, thereâs no rule saying you can pick only one result.
The Federal Reserve announced a $1.2 trillion plan three months ago designed to push down mortgage rates and breathe life into the housing market.
But this and other big government spending programs are turning out to have the opposite effect. Rates for mortgages and U.S. Treasury debt are now marching higher as nervous bond investors fret about a resurgence of inflation.
via My Way News - ALL BUSINESS: Bond-market rout lifts mortgage cost.
Wait, you mean you can't just print more money to make things better? Who would have thought it? :-/
thanks to Barack Obama and democrats, the US Unemployment rate is worse today than if they never would have passed their stimulus package. The Obama Administration predicted the unemployment rate with and without President Obama's stimulus package, the one that is supposed to "create or save" 3 million jobs.
Unfortunately, the red line shows the actual trend since the Stimulus was passed ...
via Gateway Pundit: US Loses Most Jobs At Fastest Rate In History Under Obama.
That was happening all over Beijing. On the old airport road that same night, truckloads of troops were entering the city from the east. A middle-aged bus driver saw them and quickly blocked the road with his bus.
Move aside, the troops shouted.
I wonât let you attack the students, the bus driver retorted defiantly.
The troops pointed their guns at the bus driver and ordered him to move the bus aside. Instead, he plucked the keys from the ignition and hurled them into the bushes beside the road to ensure that no one could drive that bus away. The man was arrested; I donât know what happened to him.
via The Agitator.
Think about this for a moment. Medicare is a huge, single-payer, government-run program. It ought to provide the perfect environment for experimentation. If more-efficient government management can slash health-care costs by addressing all these problems, why not start with Medicare? Let's see what "better management" looks like applied to Medicare before we roll it out to the rest of the country.
This is not a completely cynical suggestion. Medicare is, for instance, a logical place to start to design better electronic records systems and the incentives to use them. But you do have to wonder why a report that claims that Medicare is wasting 30 percent of its spending thinks it's making a case for making the rest of the health care system more like Medicare.
The ultra-poor not only feed, house, and clothe themselves; they raise children and work hard to give them a better life. Portfolios shows us how they do it, relying heavily on financial diaries kept by villagers and slum dwellers in South Africa, India, and Bangladesh.
The main lessons:
1. The income of the ultra-poor is not only low, but highly variable. They rarely have regular jobs in a "sweatshop." Instead, they desperately cobble together income from many different sources. Many days they earn nothing at all.
2. No one, no matter how poor, lives "hand to mouth." Even the poorest people save money, make investments, and plan ahead.
3. The poor also borrow a lot of money. Who would lend to them? For the most part, other poor people - family, savings clubs, small-time loan-sharks. The rates are astronomical - 20% per month is pretty common.
4. Even the poorest people spend a lot of money on things other than food. One of their main reasons for saving and borrowing is to pay for relatively lavish weddings and funerals.
When reading this book, I had two conflicting reactions.
One was optimistic: "Isn't it great to see all the clever strategies the world's poor use to better their lives?" It's inspiring - and humbling - to learn that people in dire straits see themselves as protagonists - not victims.
My other reaction, though, was frustration. Yes, the world's poor are striving to better their lot. But what they really need isn't small-scale entrepreneurship and micro-credit. It's employment in the formal sector, and access to international credit markets. What they need, in short, is globalization. Either they need to come to us, or our institutions need to go to them.
via Thumbs Up for Portfolios of the Poor, Bryan Caplan | EconLog | Library of Economics and Liberty.
GM's main problem is not that the market is unreasonably unwilling to finance a potentially profitable company. Nor that it can't produce an awesome small car that shockingly few people want to buy. (Believe me, as the owner of a tiny, ultra-efficient car, I would that there were higher demand for my rapidly depreciating asset). GM's main problems are
1) A terrible, bloated cost structure
2) A terrible, bloated bureaucracy
3) A bunch of meh car lines
Which of these is the government going to solve? That terrible, bloated cost structure supports a bloated union whose jobs are the entire rationale for the government intervention. Leaning on the parts suppliers just risks UAW jobs further down the supply chain. Maybe we can take it out of the budget for copy paper and pencils.
Forgive me if I am skeptical that the government is going to show GM how to streamline its bureaucracy. Nor do governments historically have a good record as cutting-edge auto designers.
All the government can give GM is money. Our money. Perhaps we should change the name to American Leyland.
Currently before the House Judiciary Committee, "The Denying Firearms and Explosives to Dangerous Terrorists Act of 2009 would authorize Attorney General Eric Holder to deny the sale or transfer of firearms to known or suspected terrorists--a list that could extend beyond groups such as radical Islamists and other groups connected to international terror organizations," Fox News reported.
Who could argue about denying arms to terrorist? No one. Yet, with this bill, the devilâs in the details.
"Critics say the names of suspected terrorists could be drawn from existing government watch lists that cover such broad categories as animal rights extremists, Christian identity extremists, black separatists, anti-abortion extremists, anti-immigration extremists and anti-technology extremists."
In effect, any group or people who someone might want to label as "extremist" or "anti."
via Gun Digest - Federal "Terrorist" Legislation Could Threaten Gun Owners.